Rescue operations were underway off the coast of Bulgaria on Tuesday after drones hit two commercial ships off the country’s Black Sea coast, sinking one of the vessels and setting the other ablaze, according to the country’s prime minister.
The attack — the first of its kind on vessels in Bulgarian waters — occurred at around 3 a.m. local time, according to the Bulgarian prime minister, Rumen Radev. He said the ships had been struck by sea and aerial drones about 70 miles off the coast of Byala, eastern Bulgaria.
Mr. Radev told reporters that it was not immediately clear where the drones had originated, but added that he had no doubt they were “either Ukrainian or Russian.”
Russia and Ukraine have traded strikes on ports and vessels in the Black Sea, making the shipping route there increasingly precarious.
Speaking to reporters in Sofia, the capital, after an emergency cabinet meeting, Mr. Radev acknowledged that sailing in the Black Sea had become “increasingly difficult” and called the attack “absolutely unacceptable.”
“It’s a flagrant violation of international law and maritime laws in general,” he said.
A spokesman for NATO, of which Bulgaria is a member, declined to comment on Tuesday and referred questions to the Bulgarian authorities.
Mr. Radev said that one of the ships, which had been sailing under the flag of Togo, sank after being hit and that rescuers were searching for surviving crew members. It was not immediately clear how many sailors had been aboard that vessel or what it had been carrying.
The other ship, which was sailing south with wheat on board, caught fire, and at least two of its sailors were wounded, Mr. Radev said. He added that the crew — which included 11 Turkish nationals and seven sailors from India — had been evacuated to a Bulgarian ship that witnessed the strikes.
The strikes came a day after a Turkish cargo ship carrying Ukrainian corn caught fire and sank in the Black Sea off the coast of Romania, according to Romanian authorities.
Romania’s interior ministry said in a statement on Monday that the two people had died and 11 people had been rescued in that episode, about 55 miles south of Sfantu Gheorghe, a coastal town.
While the Romanian authorities did not identify the cause of the fire, Ukrainian officials blamed Russian drones.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called the sinking of the Turkish ship a “horrific strike” and said that his government had “repeatedly proposed concrete steps to de-escalate the situation and ensure security in the Black Sea.”
“But Russia consistently chooses terror and sinking civilian vessels instead of normal maritime navigation,” he added in a post on social media.
Russia has not publicly commented on what happened off the coasts of Romania or Bulgaria.
Ukrainian and Russian forces have waged a long-running battle in the Black Sea and the adjacent Sea of Azov, disrupting grain exports from both countries that are critical to the world food supply.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive branch, described recent strikes in the Black Sea as “increasingly concerning.”
“Commercial ships — and innocent crews — are being targeted, with lives already lost at sea,” she wrote in a social media post on Tuesday. “While exact circumstances of these incidents are still being established, the developments are very concerning,” she added.
Lara Jakes contributed reporting from Rome and Marc Santora from Warsaw, Poland.
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